1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns a medical device with a compression plate for compression of a subject and/or a subject table for placement of a subject for a medical examination.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the medical field a number of the widely-varied devices exist that exhibit a compression plate and/or a subject table. In nearly every medical examination a subject to be examined is placed on a subject table in order to implement the examination. The subject tables used for this can be of different design; for example, they can serve for placement of an entire patient (as are used, for instance, in magnetic resonance tomography and computed tomography) or can also serve only for placement of a specific body part of the patient (for instance in orthopedic x-ray examinations or in mammography examinations).
Among other things, medical devices with compression plates are used for mammography or for implementation of a biopsy. In particular, the course of a biopsy can be monitored by many different analytical methods.
The compression of a (normally female) breast that is required for a mammogram today is frequently implemented with rigid, inflexible compression plates. For example, the compression plates used for this typically are formed of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA).
In mammography the compression of the breast serves on the one hand to reduce the thickness of the breast tissue to be x-rayed, so that scatter rays are reduced. Additionally, in the examination the breast is extended from the thorax of the patient by the compression of the breast, so a surface-proximal examination of the breast is enabled.
The compression of the breast is achieved by the compression device together with a rigid compression plate being displaced relative to a subject table on which the subject to be examined or to be compressed is supported. The compression of the breast or of the subject by means of a rigid compression plate (for example in a mammogram) normally does not allow a flexible consideration of an anatomy of the female breast varying from patient to patient. The compression of the breast with a rigid compression plate therefore normally leads to pain being experienced by the patient or damage to the subject to be compressed (in the event of non-living subjects).
In the field of mammography, a large number of differently-shaped rigid compression plates that are adapted to different sizes and shapes of female breasts are made available so as to allow the technician to select and provide a compression plate best adapted for a specific patient. The compression thus can proceed more comfortably for the patient.
To increase the utilization of the mammography device, however, frequently no changing of the compression plates ensues, in order to save time between mammography examinations and thereby increasing the patient throughput.
For examination of the breast of the patient by means of a mammography device, the breast is initially arranged on a subject table and is subsequently compressed by the compression plate.
Normally, both the compression plate and the subject table exhibit a surface temperature that coincides with the ambient temperature of the environment, normally room temperature of, for example, 20 degrees Celsius. Since the breast essentially exhibits the body temperature of the patient, i.e. approximately 37 degrees Celsius, the contact of the breast with the subject table as well as with the compression plate is perceived as uncomfortably cold by the patient.
The pain in the breast that is perceived by the patient during the compression as well as the feeling of cold occurring for the patient upon contact of the subject table or the compression plate with the breast leads to the patient having uncomfortable associations with having a mammogram.